LITMIR.BIZ

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started sweeping for the thousandth futile time. The grit burrowed into everything—from their hair and bedding to the tub of lard in the pantry. It was enough to drive a girl crazy.

      Pops mumbled something about the dirt being piled up to the window sills. And nonsense about how having a John Deere would make everything right.

      Sure. And his pigs could fly.

      * * * *

      Frank almost missed the barn’s faint outline. He was near blinded by the thick, brown haze—and the image of a slain old man’s sad, haunted stare as his eyes clouded over....

      He hit the brakes, cut a sharp left, and aimed towards the welcoming shadow of the farmhouse.

      Frank knocked and was pulled into the kitchen. The door slammed behind him. The heat was stifling. The room smelled of pig shit, stale sweat and despair. Layers of dirt coated everything, collecting deep and defiant in the corners. The gal who’d invited him in swept with the wrath of the damned, displacing the soil from one spot to another and back again. A man sat at the kitchen table studying gnarled hands with weary eyes. He had to be her father. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen tops.

      “Could I sleep the night in your barn, sir? It’s wild and blind out there, not safe for....”

      “No more doors, no more doors, no more sweeping, no more doors.” She chanted it like some mantra she’d repeated a thousand times, tossing the broom into the corner with a hollow clatter.

      This little dame was a real looker. A deusy. The face of an angel with porcelain skin, hair the color of half-ripe strawberries, eyes green and wild as shamrocks.

      Invited to eat with them and bed upstairs, Frank sat, sliding the bag of loot safely under his chair. His stomach thanked him loudly but he tasted nothing. Her cotton dress, paper thin from hundreds of washings, clung to her damp body, caressed her young breasts. His body responded and he was damn glad he was sitting down.

      Later, Frank followed her to where he’d sleep. As she led him up the narrow stairwell his eyes followed the motion of her round, tight caboose. Damn but he wanted to dive into the sticky sweet magic between those gams. She opened a door and they entered the room. Frank tossed his satchel into a corner as she fluffed the bed pillow with a punch hard enough to cold-cock The Great John L. A cloud of dust flew from the pillow and she mumbled, “Enough dirt to drive one crazy.”

      Maggie walked over to where Frank stood, pressing her body against his as she looked into his intense blue eyes. Her voice was deep and smoky as her hot breath whispered in his ear:

      “You can put your shoes under my bed any time.”

      Before you could say “John Dillinger” they’d disrobed, leaping into the bed, rusty bed springs creaking in protest. Sweaty bodies slid sensually against each other as she spread her legs and straddled him. Pressing him against her sweet damp folds she flexed soft pink muscles, milking his cock with them, pulling it into her. There was an urgency, a hunger, as she drove him into her forbidden depths.

      Frank’s day had started lousy, but now, in this humid little room on the outskirts of nowhere, everything was Jake.

      She leaned forward, pulling a tattered head scarf from the nightstand drawer, not bothering to reclose it. She repositioned her hips atop him and said, “I wanna play.” There was mischief in her eyes. She twirled the scarf into a blindfold and tied it securely around his head and over his eyes.

      Life couldn’t get better than this. This was payday. A bag of loot, a hot broad, and all the time in the world.

      She ground her pelvic bone against him. Her moans said she was enjoying this as much as he was. Hell, maybe more. He thrust into her, over and over. It took all the self-control he could muster not to pop off right then and there. But he wanted to drown in her wild, animal sex forever.

      Frank felt the weight of her against his chest as she stretched across him, heard her fingers shuffling through the nightstand drawer. His anticipation escalated with his breathing as he wondered what was next in this doll’s bag of tricks. This was turning into the ride of his life. Impeccably Jake.

      A flash of light and pain exploded behind Frank’s eyes, bursting and spreading like fireworks on the fucking Fourth of July. His last conscious thought was the knowledge that he was wearing the same expression as the old bank guard.

      Then darkness.

      Then nothing at all.

      Maggie kept his cock snugly inside of her as the ice pick penetrated into his brain, shoving and grinding it deeper into his ear canal like she was trying to crank up an old Model T. Deeper, deeper. She giggled as her body climaxed to the rhythm of his death throes. Then leapt from the bed.

      Frank had given himself away the moment she’d opened the door and looked into amazing blue eyes. She knelt naked on the floor, her fingers running through the money from the Farmer’s Bank heist. Her nostrils inhaled the pungent smell of government ink mixed with the oil of a thousand men’s dirty hands. The sweet, filthy aroma of cold, hard cash.

      She rose, putting the tattered dress over her head and shaking it into place with two snaps of her hip. “This fucking dust is enough to drive a girl crazy, crazy, crazy,” she sang as she galloped down the stairs with child-like enthusiasm, black satchel in hand.

      Maggie tossed the bag onto the kitchen table across from where Pops sat.

      “Here’s your John Deere, Pops,” she said proudly.

      With a slight turn of her torso, she stretched out her arm, pointing towards the stairwell.

      The hot night wind blew mournfully, carrying the oinks and snorts of the pigs as they paced and choked in their pens. In that same split second something happened inside Maggie. The deep, gnawing unknown that had haunted her stopped. It coalesced into vivid, absolute clarity. In that moment, as the pigs screams rode the deadly wind, she knew. The mystery of her mother’s departure was clear.

      She knew.

      She turned, locking eyes with Pops, still pointing awkwardly in the direction of the dead man beyond the top of the stairs. And as she spoke, Pops knew that she knew. Everything. She said:

      “...and your pigs won’t go hungry.”

      CRAWLSPACE

      If there’s one thing life’s taught me, it’s that life ain’t fair. If it was I wouldn’t have been sitting in the slammer waiting out a five year stint for robbery with nothing to read but the Bible and inspirational, self-help bullshit. One thing I learned from the Bible was that any one of those guys could have been my cell mate. That Cain guy murdered his brother. When Lot’s wife got zapped and turned to salt, he did the nasty with his own daughter. I could go on and on, but you get the point. And I had to keep an eye on my backside, even while I was sleeping. The bastards put me away on nothing but one near-sighted eyewitness who couldn’t have seen a damn thing. At trial, he pointed his finger at me like he’d actually seen me commit the crime. I stared him down, but he must’ve felt safe up there on the stand. Shit. Like I said, there was no evidence, no loot, no proof. Nothing but my extensive resume. What’s fair about that? A long rap sheet always makes you the patsy. The cops and the courts take the easy way. They just haul you back in whenever somebody snatches an old lady’s purse or poisons somebody’s rat-mutt for yapping at midnight. The lawyers get paid, win or lose, so they don’t give a shit. Especially those lazy, fucking public defenders. I feel bad for all the innocent dupes that get put away like I was—for nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ll bet there’s plenty of ’em, too. Every thug and small time crook in prison swears he’s innocent. Maybe, just maybe, a few of them are.

      Some people might call me a loser. I never saw it that way. The night before my ma’s man left for ’Nam, she asked him to give her something to remember him by. She probably wanted an engagement ring... nine months later she got me instead. She never heard from him again, never knew if he was killed in action or just another run-off asshole. But what the hell, it got me into this world, didn’t it?

      It’s

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